September 1st 2004

Okay, first day of the month and first entry to this blog! I am in Taiwan for one week right now, but didn’t find the time to write something so far. Too busy to figure things out, but they keep going quite well right now, so better late than never starting this story today.

It begins on August 24th, the day Miss Taiwanoca and me left Germany and went to Taiwan. Half of my family came with us to airport, my parents, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law and my nephew and we had to go there with two cars. So, there have been eight people at Frankfurt Airport and I belonged to the half of them not crying about the farewell. I mean, guess what? I will go to Taiwan for a couple of time, but not leaving the planet and never come back, so why worry that much about it? However, after tears were dried the long flight to Taiwan began. There was nothing much amazing about it, mostly slept in the plane and had to go off twice in Bangkok and Hong Kong to finally reach Taipei after about 18 hours at all.

We were picked by Miss Taiwanoca’s God’s mom and spent one night in Chung Li and went to Taichung the other day to spent some days at Miss Taiwanoca’s home. It was the time to „re-adapt“ to Taiwan again, getting used to the weather, the people, the hectic of daily life. In fact, all the things I missed the last six months.

On Sunday evening we took all our stuff we had in Taichung and Chung Li and went to Hsinchuang near Taipei, the place of Fu Jen University. For half of the month we can live at a friend’s room, which is located directly next to the university campus, just have to cross one street.

On Monday, I had to go to the Language Center Office to get me officially enrolled. It seemed that people already knew me there, cause I was directly called with my Chinese name 🙂 There was also a dorm room reserved for me, it also looked quite nice, but wtf……they had no internet connection in there!!! Anyway, because I have girlfriend from Taiwan, the office asked me to find a room on my own, because it is much easier when having someone speaking Chinese about all the renting stuff. And it seems there are a few students, who don’t have a room at all, so I agreed, however, I couldn’t live without Internet (and you also wouldn’t read this right now) !!!

So, it was the task to find a room for me right now. I didn’t know how easy or difficult it would be, but just two hours later I knew that it is very very easy! And you know what? I have a room in the same house I already live in right now, just have to wait until something is fixed in the bathroom and then I have my own single room!! For Taiwan’s conditions it’s quite well for one person, about 20m², own bath-room, air-condition AND internet connection :):):) The landlord also makes a nice impression (…don’t they all do at the beginning???), but seems to be quite okay for the moment.

I also bought a Taiwanese cell phone prepaid card to have my own number in Taiwan and student card to get along Taipei with bus and subway easily (driving car or motorcycle is your death as a foreigner!)

So far so good! So, it was time to let classes begin!! I was a bit excited as on my first school day, which is 17 years ago and my girlfriend also had to bring me to class, since I was too afraid to go alone and get lost 😉 I am in a class with five other students……one other from Germany, but living in Scotland, one from Panama, one from St. Kitts and Nevis, one from Senegal and one from Salomon Islands. Wow, so that is I call INTERNATIONAL !!! And maybe even the more cool thing: Everyone is here to learn Chinese 🙂 So on our first day we began with Chinese pronunciation and it started with some really funny attempts to get these Chinese tones out of our mouths, but I guess we didn’t have been bad at all for the first day. In fact, I will go there again tomorrow 🙂

So far, now you are up to date to my first week here in Taiwan, still a lot of things to figure out, but with every new day I get a bit further, stay tuned!